Can a personal brand be defined by numbers? Let’s talk about it. To set the tone for this blog post let’s talk numbers anything that you want to grow you need to measure. As a personal brand what are the numbers that you should be focused on?
I decided to compile a list of some of the top personal brands and people that I highly respect in terms of their passion and business acumen. Here are some of their numbers:
Facebook Friends/Fans
- Joseph Jaffe – Founder of Crayon which was recently acquired by Powered and author of ‘Flip the Funnel. (3,252)
- Rohit Bhargava – SVP Senior VP, Strategy & Marketing / Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence/Author of ‘Personality Not Included’ (2,300)
- Gary Vaynerchuk – Author of ‘Crush It’ and Founder of ‘WineLibrary.TV’ – 46,723 – Rock Star Numbers
- Lady Gaga – Musician (10,959,266) – Rock Star Numbers
Blog Comments
- Seth Godin (www.SethGodin.com) – Author of ‘Linchpin’ and over dozen best selling books and runs the most read Marketing blog on the planet. There are no comments because Seth doesn’t allow you to leave any. (0)
- Sarah Evans (www.PRSarahEvans.com) – She is the President of Chicago based public relations and new media consultancy Sevans Strategy and runs #journchat. (23 – Average number of comments per blog post in 2010)
- Darren Rowse (www.ProBlogger.net) - Founder of ProBlogger.net and co-author of ‘Pro Blogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income’ ) – Rock Star Numbers
Twitter followers
- Kevin Carroll (www.kevincarrollkatalyst.com) – Author of ‘Little Red Ball’ talks about the concept of play and is a internationally sought after speaker. (1,841)
- Noah Brier (www.NoahBrier.com) – Works for the The Barbarian Group and created Brand Tags and was on one of Fast Company’s 2009 100 Most Creative People (3,964)
- Tony Hsiesh (www.Zappos.com) – CEO of Zappos and Author of ‘Delivering Happiness’ (1,704,249) – Rock Star Numbers
Blog Post
- Evan Williams – Founder of Twitter. Over the last year has three blog post to EVHead.com (3)
- Guy Kawasaki – Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, Author of ‘Reality Check’ and 8-other books.
- Majora Carter – From 2001 to 2008 she was Executive Director of the non-profit she founded: Sustainable South Bronx – where she pioneered green-collar job training and placement systems in one of the most environmentally and economically challenged parts of the US. This MacArthur “genius” is now president of her own economic consulting firm, a co-host on Sundance Channel’s The Green, and host of a new special public radio series called, The Promised Land. Spoke at TED. (10)
- Emily Pilloton – Founder of Project H Design/Author of a Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People. Spoke at Pop Tech. Doesn’t have a blog. (0)
- Chris Brogan – Founder of New Marketing Labs/Author of ‘Trust Agents’ (Blogs Like everyday) – Rock Star Numbers
Videos Uploaded in YouTube
- Mitch Joel – Author of ‘Six Pixels of Separation’/Founder of Twist Image. Number of videos uploaded in YouTube (into the Twist Image & Mitch Joel Accounts). Runs an extremely popular audio podcast that you can subscribe to on iTunes. (6)
- Chris Pirillo - Chris has been participating in Internet conversations since 1992, having launched Lockergnome as a content publishing network and building Gnomedex to be one of the blogosphere’s highly regarded conferences. (2,880) – Rock Star Numbers
E-Commerce Sites
- Tom Peters – There are no financial transactions made on his site. Clicks Required to Make a Financial Transaction: (0)
- Mark Victor Hansen – Author of ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’) – Rock Star Numbers
If you listen to the tips of all the ‘EXPERTS’ they will tell you that you need to: blog everyday (or regularly), you should do video, you should write a book, you should have an insane number of Twitter followers, you need 10’s of thousands of Facebook friends/fans and you should have an e-commerce site that you can make a financial transaction within three clicks.
Maybe I am looking at this issue beyond the numbers because I only have 5,300 Twitter followers and 3,280 Facebook friends. Maybe my opinion is jaded because I don’t have the big numbers, but my point is find the numbers that matter to your personal brand versus chasing others. My blog post is not about the numerical silver bullet for personal branding but that looking purely at numbers will not always accurately tell the story or the strength of the personal brand.
Let me know what numbers impact your personal brand?
(Note: The data for this blog post was as of 07/05/10)
